BACKWARD
It was strange to share a place with someone else.
When Ivan had had the Tam Lin, even when Mattie had been on board, it had been Ivan’s ship. Mattie was sleeping there—living there—had been living there, in fact, for long enough that it was truly his home as much as Ivan’s, but it was still to begin with Ivan’s ship. But this new ship, the Annwn, was not Ivan’s ship and not Mattie’s ship but their ship together.
The Annwn was much larger, too. The Tam Lin had been built for one traveler alone. Ivan had gotten used to walking out of his bedroom to find Mattie in the other room, asleep on the couch. The times when Mattie left the ship and vanished for a few days on the surface of some planet to have privacy and space of his own were fewer and briefer than Ivan would have expected. He wondered if after years of such forced proximity, this new space would make them both feel, at first, alone.
The circular hallway of the Annwn was bright and clean, with rungs set into the walls for when the ship was landed and the floor became the walls and the ceiling. The hall was also totally bare and empty, as well as the rooms that Ivan passed on his route. Eventually their lives would expand to take up the rest of this space, but for now, the Annwn was empty and did not yet feel quite like home.
In the piloting room, Matthew Gale was bent over the computer, muttering something to himself.
“Should I let myself hope,” said Ivan, “that you’re going through the computer’s programs removing System spyware?”
“I did that ages ago.”
“What, then, are you doing now?”
Mattie cast a grin over the edge of his shoulder. “Come here.”
Ivan went obediently. He had to duck when he got near Mattie; the ceiling sloped down at the far end of the room, where the main viewscreen and the computer interfaces were. This room was among the smallest of the Annwn’s rooms, with just enough space to fit their two chairs. It was darker than the hall or the living spaces, the better to see the lights of the screen and the displays all around, but it was a warm sort of dimness and the light from the doorway to the hall did not seem blinding.
“Closer,” Mattie said when Ivan was at his shoulder, so Ivan sat down in the second chair and dragged it so that he could lean over Mattie, his chin occupying the air an inch over Mattie’s shoulder. Mattie glanced at him again to make sure he was paying attention, their noses almost brushing, then turned back to the screen.
Mattie said aloud, “Computer, say hello to Ivan.”
The computer said in a strangely synthesized female voice, “Hello, Ivan.”
“Can it beg and roll over, too?”
“Computer,” Mattie said, “tell Ivan what kind of person he is.”
“An asshole,” said the computer without any inflection at all.
Ivan didn’t laugh, but only because if he did, Mattie would have won, and Mattie had such a shit-eating grin on his face already that Ivan judged that his ego didn’t need any more boosting. “What’s the point of this?”
“It’s fun. I’ve always wanted to play with an AI, and the Annwn’s computer is powerful enough that I can try. It’s like having a kid, but without having to wipe their ass.”
“I didn’t know you liked children.”
“Sure I do. But I don’t like feeding them or wiping their asses.”
The computer screen was still patiently waiting for input. A responsive program but not an intelligence: if it were conscious, it would know they discussed it.
“So long as the computer doesn’t become impossible to run and I don’t have to change any diapers,” Ivan said, “you have fun.”
“You don’t like children.”
Sometimes Mattie could surprise Ivan, thinking on paths parallel to but separate from Ivan’s thoughts. Ivan wasn’t sure if that was because Mattie was surprising or if he simply had no problem letting Mattie be a surprise. “I don’t dislike them.”
“I always wanted a kid.” Mattie leaned back in his chair, and Ivan had to pull away or be struck by his shoulder. Ivan leaned on the computer display, where the computer still waited with eternal patience for its next input. “A little girl. I didn’t really like any of the other boys when I was a kid.”
The image came to Ivan, unexpectedly vivid: Mattie Gale with a daughter, a little girl with blonde hair being hoisted up into his arms, his long thief’s fingers smoothing over her hair, pressing his cheek to her scalp.
It was somehow a disquieting image. Mattie said, “I always knew I’d have to adopt, of course, but I thought maybe I could get a girl from Miranda.”
“I’ve never wanted a child.” A little girl, brought into this, with him as her father and no future ahead? He could not imagine a worse fate for a child than to have no future at all. His mother at least had had the excuse of hope when she’d conceived him. She should have known better, but at least she’d had the excuse.
He almost didn’t realize how closely Mattie had been watching him until Mattie said, “Anyway, I decided that if I can’t mess up the mind of a little child, I’ll at least get to mess up a computer. I have to give it a real name, though. I can’t keep calling it ‘computer.’ ”
He was looking at Ivan. “It’s your kid,” said Ivan. “You name it.”
“We could call her Annwn.”
Ivan wouldn’t subject any individual, sentient or not, to a name like Annwn. “Call her Annie.”
“Annie,” said Mattie, testing out the word. He patted the computer. “You hear that, Annie? I’ve got a name for you.”
Absent appropriate input, the computer did not reply.
FORWARD
Ivan knew the name Arawn Halley.
“What the hell does that mean?” Mattie demanded while Ivan tried to chase back the spider-silk of memory. “Where is Constance?”
Arawn Halley. He’d been a revolutionary leader on Pluto, a particularly brutal one. And on Mars when Ivan had been searching for news of Constance, an old woman had told him that Arawn had been the one who had burned the city Isabellon to the ground.
You take so much after your mother, Arawn had said.
“What’s going on?” Tuatha said. She had moved to Niels’s side—they looked so alike; were they siblings?—and had taken his arm to pull him back.
If Ivan didn’t get a handle on these people and this situation, it might implode.
“These men,” said Arawn, “are close associates of the Mallt-y-Nos. This one was her foster brother”—pointing a finger at Mattie—“and this one is her lover.” There was a strange antagonism in the way he said the words, the way he looked at Ivan, beyond what he showed for Mattie. “They’re a danger to the revolution.”
“What the hell happened to Constance?” said Mattie.
One of the soldiers holding Mattie was a woman whose decorative Plutonian drapes were crushed beneath an outer layer of body armor. At a glance from Arawn, she moved, her knee coming up to Mattie’s gut. Ivan heard the air rush out of him, and in the next moment the woman and the soldier on his other side were all that was holding him up.
Ice crackled and shifted with groaning weight in Ivan’s heart.
“Arawn!” Tuatha said with an abortive movement forward, drawing Arawn’s attention away from Mattie’s bent head. “They’re helping us.”
“Did you know this man is Terran?”
“I was born there,” Ivan said. Behind him, someone hissed his breath at the admission.
“This man is Terran,” said Arawn to Tuatha and to the rest, spreading his arms, a production of paranoia. “And both of them are closely connected with the traitor Constance Harper.”
Mattie’s breath was wheezing less. Ivan only hoped he had the sense to stay silent, but the furious glance he threw at Arawn suggested that the only thing keeping him silent was his fading physical distress.
“They’re helping us build defenses against the spiral ship,” Tuatha said, but uncertainly.
For a moment Arawn stared at her in incomprehension. Then he laughed.
“That ghost story?” he said. “You people really believe there’s a rogue System ship up there that my fleet can’t destroy?”
“It’s no ghost story,” Niels said. “It’s a real ship. We saw it. It destroyed half the computers on this moon—and it’s coming back.”
“By whose report?”
Niels looked at Mattie.
“You believe the word of these liars and traitors?” said Arawn. “They’re manipu—”
“The Mallt-y-Nos had an ally named Julian Keys,” Ivan said, clear and loud. “Did you ever find out what happened to him?”
Ivan felt the accuracy of his own guess, as if he had hit upon the frequency that was in resonance with the others’ bodies, and now they rang out like bells under the power of his voice.
“How did you find him?” Ivan asked, and thinking of superstition and thinking of power, he smiled with faint and dire confidence at Arawn’s wary expression. “Dead, and his ships dead around him?”
The woman holding Mattie’s arm hissed out her breath. Mattie miraculously kept silent, and in his silence kept himself safe. Ivan said, “That is how you found him, isn’t it? His whole fleet dead, and not a mark on them.”
Tuatha was watching him the way she might watch a wild dog. Arawn’s expression was hard to read, but he was looking at Ivan, really looking at him, as if he were seeing Ivan for the first time and not what he imagined Ivan to be.
“That ship will do the same thing to you and all your people,” Ivan said. “And it won’t cost it a minute’s effort or a second’s remorse. It will happen soon. That ship is coming. You won’t be able to make a mark on her.”
“Why should I believe a Terran?” said Arawn.
“That was the ship where Constance left me to die.”
Murmurs, movement from the people surrounding them.
Ivan said, “We can help you. We can change your ships so that that ghost ship can’t touch them. It doesn’t cost you anything if we’re wrong. But if we’re right, all your ships in orbit will be dead, and you’ll be marooned on this moon for the rest of your life.”
“And if I let you into my ships’ computers, you can do whatever you like to them,” said Arawn. “Program them not to fly, corrupt them, destroy them yourselves.”
“Send someone to watch us,” said Ivan. “What we’re doing isn’t complicated. We can teach your people how to do it.”
From the fleeting expression on Arawn’s face, Ivan knew the truth: Arawn didn’t have any skilled technicians. Sure, his soldiers would know the basics of machinery; it wasn’t possible to live in the System’s world without having a basic comprehension of how their computers worked. But he had no one as skilled as Ivan and Mattie were.
Constance had always valued fighters over intellectuals.
Arawn said, “Both of you can do this?”
“Yes,” said Ivan, “together—”
But Arawn was shaking his head, a faint smile on his face. The look he turned on Ivan was triumphant. “Either of you can do this.”
“No,” said Ivan, “not alone,” but Arawn was looking at Mattie now and reading in his expression what Ivan wasn’t admitting.
“Separate them,” said Arawn, and Ivan found himself suddenly pulled away from Mattie, the nearness of him the worst kind of absence, when Arawn might—
Mattie said, in a way that frightened Ivan more than a gun to his head ever could, “If you hurt him—”
Arawn laughed. “Calm down, little brother. You’re the hostage. Danu,” he said, and the woman holding Mattie’s arm straightened to attention, “take the son of Milla Ivanov to my shuttle. Let’s find out if he can do what he promises.”
FORWARD
Mattie did not think there could be a better satisfaction in this world than getting his fingers around Arawn’s neck and feeling the bones of it snap beneath his grip. Maybe if he did, the heat that had been burning in his chest ever since the day he had faced Constance down over the expanse of her empty bar might burn out. Or maybe not—maybe that heat was the one strength he had left in Constance’s new and vicious world.
He was brought behind Arawn into the old System building that the Conmacs had taken as a headquarters. Ivan had been taken away by a different group of guards to Arawn’s shuttle.
Mattie watched the back of Arawn’s neck as he walked.
“My people like Constance Harper,” Tuatha was saying, walking beside Arawn through the main antechamber toward the grand steps on the other end, two steps for his one. “They won’t like to hear—”
“Explain to them that she was a traitor,” said Arawn, with a sort of genial confidence that Mattie hated immediately. “She betrayed her revolution, and she was willing to leave this moon to the System. They’ll understand that.”
Tuatha blinked, her mouth ajar, but no words came out.
Arawn stopped when they reached the step.
“You can do that, can’t you?” he said to Tuatha, and clapped one hand on her arm.
For so long that Mattie almost thought she might refuse, Tuatha did not reply. Then her gaze slid off Arawn and onto his guard of well-armed, well-trained soldiers, two of whom still had Mattie by the arms.
“Yes,” Tuatha said.
“Then do it,” said Arawn, as relaxed as a well-fed dog. “An ambassador from Anji Chandrasekhar will be here soon. I want to speak to him. When he arrives, send him to me. I’ll be in the war room.”
“Yes,” Tuatha said, but she was saying it to the air; Arawn had already started to walk off. She met Mattie’s eyes as he passed; she looked away first.
When they had reached the top of the steps and were headed down the long transverse hall toward the war room, Arawn said to Mattie, “How close is the System ship?”
“Fuck you,” Mattie said.
“I know that either you or Ivanov could do to my ship what I sent him to do. I only really need one of you.”
Mattie imagined what the collapse of Arawn’s windpipe would feel like under his fingers.
“How close,” Arawn Halley asked, “is the System ship?”
If he had been Ivan, Mattie would have had a dozen lies ready and would have been able to pick the one that would best manipulate Arawn Halley. Because he was not Ivan, Mattie had only the truth.
It took only a quick mental calculation: how many days lost on Europa, how far the ship must have been for that transmission, how fast the Ananke could travel.
“Close,” he said. “Could be a week. Could be a few minutes. But she’ll be here soon, and when she gets here, she’s going to kill you.”
“ ‘She’?” said Arawn. “Who is ‘she’? Is she the commander of this ship?”
“That’s what you call a ship,” said Mattie. “Ships are ‘shes.’ ”
They had arrived at the war room. Arawn pushed the door open and strode in, and Mattie’s captors followed. The war room did not look any different as a prisoner than it had as a free man. The map of Europa still glowed a gentle silver, the edges of the nearest cryovolcano warped with imperfections in the light.
Mattie’s guards led him to one of the metal chairs and cuffed his hands to the armrests. Idiots, he thought, and winced as they cinched the metal bracelets too tight.
Arawn said, “What do you know about this System ship?”
“Not much,” said Mattie as the second cuff was tightened enough to dig into his skin. He subtly flexed his fingers to test the strength of the metal but not subtly enough—Arawn’s gaze flickered down to his hands knowingly. “I only know what it’s done before. It killed Julian and his people,” killed them seconds after Mattie had been talking to him, killed him, probably, because it had been looking for Mattie himself, “and when it gets here, it’ll do the same thing to you.”
“Not if your friend can do what he says.”
“He can do what he says,” Mattie said.
“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” said Arawn. Mattie envisioned slamming his head forward so that his forehead struck Arawn’s chin and broke his teeth.
But Arawn was too far away, and if Mattie got shot here, there would be no one to help Ivan—or his sister.
“I told you about the System ship,” Mattie said. “Now tell me what happened to Constance.”
“She wasn’t looking for you, you know.” Arawn sat himself on the edge of the table. The hologram flickered in distress when he intercepted it and faded out into static where it impacted the edge of his broad coat. “She didn’t give either of you any thought at all.”
“Where is my sister?”
“Dead, soon. Milla Ivanov is dead, too.”
Mattie’s hands clenched around the armrests of the chair. “Tell me what you did to my sister.”
Arawn smiled humorlessly. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Your sister turned her back on this revolution: she was going to let the System live. I removed her before she could do any more harm, and I sent her to Anji Chandrasekhar. What happens to her next is Anji’s problem.”
“She’s not at Saturn yet?”
“I have no idea where she is.”
“The ships you sent her away in,” said Mattie. “How large were they? Were they relativis—”
“They were large ships,” Arawn admitted, which meant that the ships wouldn’t have relativistic drives, which meant that they probably hadn’t reached Saturn yet, which meant that Constance was still alive and Mattie still had time.
Arawn said, “She’s dead, Mattie. But I know you’re a man of many talents. Loyalty. And you have the right spirit to stay alive in these times. You could find a place with me and mine.”
Mattie said, “I will bite off your face and leave you to choke to death on your own tongue.”
Arawn did not seem surprised. He straightened up and rose from his seat on the table. The hologram rippled back into place as he left, the glassy ice of Europa re-forming.
“Keep him here,” he ordered his guards. “Wait for me. The ambassador will be here soon, and I’ll be back to meet him.”
He left, swinging the reinforced door shut behind him and enclosing Mattie in the soundless gray room.
With the guards watching, Mattie couldn’t even work to get himself out of the handcuffs. He gritted his teeth and tried not to do anything stupid.
Hang on, Constance, he thought, and flexed his fingers against the numbness that threatened them. I’m going to get to you first.
FORWARD
The shuttle that had brought Arawn Halley down to Europa once had been System. Ivan wondered if there existed a single revolutionary ship that had not once been System.
Now that the System was gone, Ivan thought, who would build any more ships? The solar system would fight itself until it marooned its people on their own dying moons.
“This way,” said Danu. The shuttle had two levels; the lower level was a wide empty space for troops to gather for immediate disembarking onto the ground, and the upper level, Ivan knew, would be the more specialized rooms. The walls down here had been stripped down to bare metal. Ivan saw the places where System screens once had been welded to the walls, the better to show a constant display of orders and propaganda.
There was an elevator in the back of the shuttle, but Danu ignored it, climbing up the nearest of the ladders that were set into the walls. Ivan followed her despite the way the climb pulled at his injured leg.
For a moment, while the rest of Arawn’s people climbed up the ladder, it was just Ivan and Danu standing in the narrow dark hallway of the upper level. Ivan considered whether he could take her out.
Danu stood with the squared hips of someone who knew how to rule a fight. Her skin had been weathered by a long Plutonian winter, and she had a gun and at least three different knives at her hip. She’d have him subdued in an embarrassingly short time.
The other two guards joined them on the second level momentarily, and Ivan almost laughed. Three guards for a man who couldn’t take down even one.
“Here,” said Danu, and opened a solid metal door, letting Ivan into the shuttle’s control room.
The room was made of the same black metal as the rest of the ship, and lights and screens glittered from that black metal like stars in the sky. Two steps led up to a metal-mesh platform that let the crew walk over the mass of wiring and machinery that cluttered what should have been the floor. From the mesh platform, the computer interfaces could be reached: a main viewscreen that took up one slanted wall; other, smaller viewscreens that were mounted on the ceilings; keyboards and smaller displays that were set into the walls and counters. Directly beside the two metal-mesh steps, lofty and dark and hollow, was a holographic terminal.
Danu followed Ivan up the mesh steps. The room was not too large; Ivan could cross it with six generous strides. Nor was it especially bright; aside from a few round lights beneath the mesh platform, lighting up the wires and machinery underneath, most of the light in the room came from the computer displays.
“Well?” said Danu.
“I have to see what I’m dealing with.” Ivan chose the main display as a starting point. Stools made of the same black metal as the rest of the ship had been welded to the mesh, and Ivan seated himself in front of the screen. The stool was warm not with body heat but with the heat of the machinery that had traveled in gentle vibrations through all the interconnected metal.
The other two guards stood at the base of the metal-mesh steps in the little space between the steps and the outer door. Only Danu had come up onto the platform with him. Ivan said casually to her as he worked to get to know the ship he was now immersed in, “Your name’s Danu?”
“Yes,” said Danu.
“You’re from Pluto?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you followed Arawn?”
“Six years.”
“That’s not as long as I thought.”
“Can you work and talk at the same time?”
“I’m doing it right now,” Ivan said, and the shuttle opened itself to him the way Danu did not. Standard System military operating system. A pain to do—the System’s surveillance was never so deeply integrated in a machine than when the machine had to do with its own military—but doable for certain.
He said to Danu, “I’m curious. Is Arawn going to kill me and Mattie after this, or is Mattie already dead?”
“Arawn doesn’t waste useful lives.”
“That’s very reassuring, Danu,” said Ivan, and watched for the faint flicker of her brown eyes that might speak of remorse.
The last time he’d been here had been on the Ananke, trying to pull Althea Bastet’s pity from its shell of wariness. It was suddenly exhausting to keep working Danu. Ivan turned from her and her three knives and the gray streaking her long black hair and dived into the machine.
After all, Ananke was coming.
It was not Ananke who came next to disturb him, but Arawn.
“You can go,” came Arawn’s voice from behind Ivan, and Ivan heard the other two guards leave. “Danu, stay.”
The metal mesh rattled beneath Arawn’s feet as he took the two steps up to the platform. “How far along?”
“This is a military ship; it’s riddled with System overrides,” Ivan said. “This will take me a little while.”
“Your friend warned me that this ghost ship is nearly here.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in this ghost ship.”
“I don’t. But I also believe in having every possible advantage.”
It was Constance all over again, Ivan realized. If Ivan gave Arawn the advantages he needed, Arawn would destroy Ananke and Althea as well. If Ivan did not, Arawn would attack the Ananke anyway, and he and all his people would die.
“Then don’t engage that ship when it arrives. It’s not interested in you. If you leave her alone, she might do the same.”
“She,” said Arawn. “Again, ‘she.’ Mattie said that, too.” He bent down in front of Ivan so that they were eye to eye. “What do you and Mattie Gale know about this ship that you’re not telling me?”
“Traditionally, ‘she’ is the correct address for a ship,” said Ivan, and Arawn snorted.
“That’s what he said, too,” Arawn said, and straightened up. Ivan caught a brief glimpse of Danu watching the conversation with quick, expressionless eyes. No help from that corner.
“I knew your mother,” Arawn remarked. He seated himself on the stool beside Ivan’s, resting his elbows on his knees. “Quite a woman, Milla Ivanov. I liked your mother. She didn’t like me much—it was hard to tell what your mother thought—but she respected me, and I respected her.”
“How nice.”
“We don’t need to be enemies, Ivan,” Arawn said, genial and honest. “You understand why I had to arrest you and Mattie when I saw you, but I don’t have anything against either of you. We can be friends.”
“If I say I’m your friend, will you let me and Mattie go?”
“Prove you’re my friend first and then we can talk.”
“How can I prove that I’m your friend?”
“Start by telling me what you know about this System ghost ship.”
“I don’t like to trade in intangible things.”
“Then what do you want?”
“A ship,” said Ivan. “After I finish with your shuttle, give me and Mattie a ship and let us leave.”
“Done,” Arawn said. Behind him, Danu watched inscrutably.
Ivan said, “The spiral ship isn’t System.”
“Is it rebel?”
Not as much a fool as he put on, then. “No. The ship belongs to herself and herself alone. Her name is Ananke, and she has no crew.”
“How is that possible?”
“The computer is alive.”
“You’re as superstitious a fool as these damn Europans,” said Arawn. “The computer’s programmed somehow to fly on its own; is that it?”
“If a program can think, and feel, and decide.”
“A computer can’t do any of those things.”
“Can’t it?” Ivan said. Around them, the lights of the machine they were burrowed inside blinked placidly. “You can simulate thought and emotion to a certain extent. Imagine you could simulate it perfectly. What would be the difference between a perfect simulation and a real living thing?”
Arawn spread his hands in demonstration of his indifference.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ivan said. “Practically, what matters is how you react to it. However you’re going to handle this situation, understand this: that ship is alive, and conscious, and willing to defend herself.”
For a moment Arawn studied him in silence. Then he said, without turning, “Danu, can you handle Mr. Ivanov on your own?”
“He has a bad leg and limited fight experience, sir,” Danu confirmed.
“Good,” Arawn said. “When I leave, keep Morrigu and Manawydan downstairs. They don’t need to hear Leon’s babbling.”
Ivan’s mother’s name for him. Arawn was a blunter weapon than he took himself to be.
“I’ve been wondering,” Arawn said, and most of his seeming geniality had faded, but he brought back the shadows of it to grin at Ivan, “exactly what Constance cared for about you.”
“My good looks,” said Ivan flatly.
“Your mother had steel in her. Your father was the leader of the first revolution. I thought when I met you I’d see that sort of genius looking out of your eyes. But you’re nothing but a cowardly Terran who’s all talk. I don’t see a damn thing in you that the Mallt-y-Nos could have ever admired.”
“If it matters so much to you, you should have asked her,” Ivan said.
Arawn tilted his jaw like a bull lining up a charge. “Mattie kept asking about her,” he said. “But you haven’t said a word.”
“You said it yourself. She’s gone.”
“She’s not dead yet. I sent her off with Anji, but the ship hasn’t reached Titan. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“It clearly doesn’t bother you.”
The computer chose that moment to pierce the air with a shriek that descended like a chime. Ivan started. A break and then the sound repeated—
Arawn hit the communications. “Halley.”
The transmission was fuzzed with faint static. It must have come from orbit. “We’ve detected a ship just outside of the Jovian system. Unusual shape, but it appears to be System.”
“Is there anyone else with it?”
“No, it’s alone.”
“What’s its course?”
“Headed straight for Europa. At its current speed, it’ll be here in a few hours.”
Arawn looked at Ivan. “Arm the ships in orbit. Spread out to net her. If the ship gets too close to Europa, destroy it.”
“Should we pursue it?”
“Not yet,” Arawn said, and disconnected the communication. “Every possible advantage,” he reminded Ivan.
“Leave her alone,” Ivan said.
“Let a System ship pass us by?” Arawn laughed and rose from the stool. “Not as long as I live. Fix this machine the way you said you could, and you and your friend will survive this.”
“Why me?” Ivan asked, and stopped Arawn before he could go down the mesh steps and leave. “If you flew with Constance and her crew, then you know that Mattie’s better at machine manipulation than I am. He could have this done faster than I ever could.”
Arawn shrugged. “We have the time.”
“Not much of it.”
“Have you ever seen a beaten dog, Ivanov? The thing about dogs is that after they’ve been beaten, they go one of two ways. Either they become feral and aggressive, trying to be the one who bites first this time, or they become passive. Limp.”
The lights of the computer blinked steadily on and off.
“And here I had the good fortune—or the bad fortune—of finding two of Constance Harper’s hounds,” Arawn said. “Her oldest and most loyal hounds, in fact. But what am I to do with them?”
“Let them go on their way?” said Ivan. “They’re not your dogs.”
“If I were to let your friend Mattie have free access to my computer like you do, he’d find some way to hurt me just because he wants to strike first. But you? You’ll do as you’re told.”
Danu was still watching in silence, no break in the hard shell of her expression. Ivan said nothing, because there was nothing to be said.
“So get to work,” Arawn said.
FORWARD
If only these people would stop watching him, Mattie was sure he could get out of the handcuffs.
The map of Europa on the table was in real time. It showed the conic section of light from Europa’s movement relative to the sun, and Mattie watched that light move slowly over the surface of the table as outside, unseen, it moved over the surface of Europa, creeping closer and closer to the Conamara Chaos where Mattie now was.
The slow track of the sun marked the slow course of Constance to her own execution. Mattie sat and watched the sun and flexed his hands against his bonds and thought how he would break free the moment he was able, and damn the risks.
Arawn came in before Mattie could find a way out. He saw Mattie and smiled.
Knowing that he was being baited somehow didn’t make it any easier not to react. Mattie glared.
Arawn did not arrive alone. Tuatha was following him, along with a few other of Arawn’s people, none of whom Mattie recognized. She was saying, “—at the edge of the sensors. It is a ship, a huge one.”
“My people will take care of the System ship,” Arawn said in a friendly, reassuring sort of tone that reassured no one and made no friends.
“If it’s the spiral ship—”
“If it is,” said Arawn, “or if it isn’t, my people will take care of it.”
Tuatha’s shoulders dropped. “Yes,” she said, “…sir.” She took her directed place at the table and did not look Mattie’s way.
Arawn seated himself right beside Mattie. This close to him, Mattie could smell him: his human scent, the leather and damp wool of his garb, the crisper smell of ice brought from inside. He was a tangible and physical thing yet still too far away for Mattie to attack.
Mattie twisted his wrists in the bracelets while the rest of the room’s occupants filtered in.
The men Arawn had brought—and Tuatha and Mattie—filled up only half of the table. Seated above Europa’s north pole, Arawn turned and said something quietly to the man on his other side, someone on Mattie’s right whispered to his neighbor, and Tuatha stared at and through the holographic surface of Europa. Her cap was gone from her head.
If Mattie broke free now—he could do it; one quick slam of his thumb against the rest of the chair, and then he would have one hand free; no, he’d have to dislocate both thumbs and get both hands free at once. If he did that, it would be him against twelve others—eleven if Tuatha took his side.
He doubted that Tuatha would take his side.
From down the hall beyond the opened vault door, Mattie heard voices, footsteps, as more people came toward the map room.
Two bad hands and no weapons. Bad odds, but they would get worse if any more people came in.
Maybe he could get Arawn’s gun, Mattie thought. If he could lift Arawn’s gun and shoot, he might be able to take Arawn out before being taken down himself. But then Ivan would be alone, and who knew who would take power after the warlord’s death?
But the longer Mattie waited to move, the farther Constance got and the closer came Ananke.
The footsteps reached the door and rounded, and Mattie’s plans stalled. He knew the man standing in the doorway. Tall, dreadlocked, his square jaw set. He had worked with Ivan and Mattie once upon a time and in better days. He had been the captain of the Badh, left behind in battle with a System fleet, sure to die.
“Welcome to Europa, Vithar,” Arawn said.
Vithar recovered from his surprise more quickly than Mattie. “Arawn Halley. It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Just Arawn,” said Arawn, and grinned at Vithar through his beard. “Sit down. How is Anji?”
“She sends her regards.”
Vithar had known Constance. Was Anji trying to get him out of the way so that when she executed Constance, he wouldn’t be there to protest?
Or had Anji known that Mattie and Ivan were there somehow and had sent Vithar to help?
Even if Anji somehow had known Mattie and Ivan were there in time to send Vithar—impossible; not even Arawn had known of their presence until an hour ago—there was no guarantee Vithar would be their friend. Mattie twisted his wrists in the cuffs.
“Has she received my gift?” Arawn asked.
“Still in transport,” Vithar said. “We’re being very careful with her.”
Mattie realized who the gift was, and a rage swelled up into him so suddenly powerful that he was certain if he jerked his arms, he would snap the cuffs from the force of his anger alone. That was it: he was going to break out, he was going to get Arawn’s gun—or Arawn’s knife—or his maimed hands around Arawn’s neck—
“I hoped to speak with you alone,” Vithar said, and Mattie stilled, the joint of one thumb braced on the metal of the armrest.
Arawn said, “Don’t you trust my friends?”
“Anji told me to pass my messages on to you and you alone.”
Mattie could see Arawn debating whether to be offended by this. But he must have needed Anji’s alliance, because he said, “The rest of you, out.”
Mattie, chained down, gave him a sour look; Arawn caught it and smiled grimly.
“You can stay,” he said to Mattie while the rest of his people rose obediently. “This is one-half of another gift I’m thinking about sending to Anji,” he added, raising his voice so that Vithar could hear over the din of people moving. “The foster brother of the Mallt-y-Nos. The other half is her old lover. How would Anji like that?”
Vithar met Mattie’s gaze at last. Mattie looked for some sign of alliance, some recognition of their past association.
Vithar turned away, dismissing Mattie as if he were nothing more than the dead parts of some machine, to be used and then discarded. He said, “I think Anji would like that very much.”
FORWARD
Ivan had done this so many times by now that he finished his work on Arawn’s shuttle within the hour.
He didn’t let Danu know, of course. Information was a power that people never appreciated enough.
“Did you ever,” he asked her as he sat down on the grated floor, bad leg stretched out, and unlocked the hatch that led down to the machinery below, “follow the Mallt-y-Nos?”
“I follow Arawn.”
The metal-mesh hatch opened and fell with a rattling crash. The sound of it almost covered up Ivan’s laugh.
“So she can go to hell, right?” He flashed a bright smile back at Danu. She looked at him, her face cold stone, her hand resting gently over where her gun jutted up from her waistband. And looking at her, she looking at him, Ivan knew, like the first light of a far-off explosion that arrived before the rumble and shock of the sound wave, that once he was done with Arawn’s shuttle, Danu would kill him.
Ivan turned back to the hatch in the floor before she could see the knowledge written on his face. “I guess it makes sense,” he said, and reached for the toolbox beneath the computer terminal. He caught the metal box with the pads of his fingers and pulled it in. “You’ve known Arawn for six years. You knew Constance for what, a few months?”
The contents of the toolbox rattled so loudly that Ivan might not have been able to hear Danu’s response had she made one.
Screws. Washers. Nails. His hands hidden by the toolbox, Ivan pressed his fingertip to the end of one nail and found it dull.
“How much longer are you going to take?” Danu asked from somewhere behind and above him.
Wire strippers, screwdriver, wrench. Whoever had put together this toolbox had done so without any understanding of what Ivan might need if he really intended to do serious alterations to the ship’s hardware. It wasn’t even internally consistent; there were nails—useless—but no hammer.
“Not much longer.” Ivan pulled out a pair of wire cutters, the tiny blades shining in the twinkling starlight of the computer. He shifted himself carefully to his side, moving slowly as if his leg were paining him. On his side, he could reach down through the open hatch into the mass of wires beneath.
Danu said, “The spiral ship is in the Jovian system by now. This shuttle needs to be spaceworthy.”
“If Ananke’s in the Jovian system, then she’s in communication range.” Ivan’s fingers slid around a wire with a pale gray coating, like corpse skin. He followed the course of it as it wound through the bundles on the floor. “Have you tried talking to her?”
“Talking to a System ship?”
The gray wire once had been the optics for the System news broadcast screen; that was no longer functional, and so the wire was extraneous. Ivan clipped it at either end and pulled several feet of it out of the hatch, coiling it beside him on the floor. He dropped the tiny wire cutters back into the box and lifted the screwdriver, studying its sharp tip.
“Ivanov.”
The last name again. “Sorry,” Ivan said, and dropped the screwdriver back into the box. “Turns out I can’t work and talk at the same time.”
The wrench fit into his palm and hefted with a satisfying weight.
He knew by this point that he wouldn’t be able to get a rise out of her, but it didn’t matter. He rose to his feet and crossed the room to the main computer terminal. “Actually, you have bigger worries than how long it will be until this ship can get into orbit.” A moment’s work got him into the shuttle’s alarm system. “If Ananke’s in communication range, that means she’s in range to start taking over the computers of all your ships.”
“Which is more reason you need to be done soon,” Danu said.
It would be a simple matter to set up a timer. For a moment Ivan stood unmoving, the wrench weighing down his hand.
He started the timer.
“I’m curious.” Ivan left the computer, keeping a slow, careful count in his head as he walked over to where Danu stood just beside the metal-mesh steps. He limped more heavily than before, as if exhaustion had worn him down. “Do you feel fulfilled, following Arawn?”
Five, four…
He stood right in front of her. Her brows had drawn down in annoyance and incomprehension. He had surprised her. She opened her mouth to speak—
The shuttle’s alarm blared like the sound of an explosion that had finally hit. It broke Danu’s strict attention for a moment, just a moment, her head snapping up to seek this greater danger.
Ivan nailed her with the wrench.
It struck her hard in the temple, and she fell, limbs jerking spasmodically in an instinctive defensive reaction. She hit the mesh steps and fell down them to land heavily on the floor; it was not a long fall but hard enough that she went still. The edge of the wrench had torn the skin by her brow, and the bright rapid blood of a head wound was already spilling down her cheek. Ivan hoped he hadn’t killed her.
The alarm shut off, as it was intended to, and Ivan dropped the wrench to grab the wire he had cut. He landed beside Danu with only the slightest reluctant twinge of his bad leg and hauled her upright. She groaned but did not wake.
He tossed her gun and both knives up onto the platform. While she slumped, head dangling, Ivan tied her hands together around the bar of the stair’s railing tightly enough that she wouldn’t be able to work free. When he was done, he checked her sleeves and pulled another knife from a sheath strapped to her right arm.
Then he left her there, bleeding and immobilized but for the most part alive. Ivan did not take her gun and go for the door. There were at least two more guards down below and beyond that an entire army’s worth of enemies, with Mattie a captive somewhere in the middle.
Instead, he went for the computer.
The sensors on the shuttle were weak, as shipboard systems went; the shuttle wasn’t designed for open space but for transport between spacecraft or from spacecraft to planet. But they were sensitive enough to show Ivan what he wanted to see: Arawn’s fleet up in orbit, spread out like a net over the stars.
And past them, drifting vast and alone through space, was another ship. Ivan turned his scans on that ship. Mass-based gravitation, the scans told him; impossibly dense. And she was radiating in all wavelengths: radio, infrared, microwave, visible. All those wavelengths were broadcast in desperate and defiant display like a searchlight, like a sun.
For a moment, Ivan just looked at that ship, a point of light drifting fuzzily across the main screen. She might pass by if he did not summon her. She might fly off, blazing light, and never trouble Europa.
No. He knew it, and he could see it on the screen in front of him. The starship Ananke was headed right for Europa. No matter what he did, she would reach Europa on her own, where Arawn’s fleet was waiting.
He reached for the communications equipment and aimed his message right at that blazing ship. He was calm still, the same sort of calm he had felt on his mother’s rooftop on Terra while he was bleeding out, on the Ananke when Domitian had been about to shoot him at last.
“Ananke and Althea,” he said into the microphone, and knew his words were rippling across space as fast as anything could travel, heading directly for that lonely ship. “It’s Ivan. You’ve found me.”
FORWARD
The only thing stopping Mattie from breaking out of his cuffs was Arawn’s nearness. If he dislocated his thumb, the pop of the shifting joint would draw Arawn’s attention for sure.
He braced his right hand—the hand farther from Arawn—against the hard metal of the chair and waited for his opportunity.
Arawn said, “Has Anji thought about the rest of the territories to divide up?”
“The rest of the territories?” Vithar asked.
“Of course, Anji will have Saturn, and I will have Jupiter. We can divide the rest of the planets easily enough.”
Vithar shifted in his chair, his hands coming off the edge of the table, where they had entwined with the holographic hills of Europa’s ice to rest out of sight in his lap. “For the moment, Anji is content with Saturn.”
Vithar might not have seen the contempt in Arawn’s eyes. Mattie saw it because he was watching him so carefully, waiting for the moment he was distracted enough for him to make his move.
Arawn said, “Then Anji won’t mind if I act in my own best interests—all of our best interests, since I’ll be wiping the System out.”
“Of course not. Is this room soundproof?”
“Yes,” Arawn said, annoyed. “Don’t worry, Vithar. Our conversation is completely private.”
“Good.”
“About Venus—” Arawn began, and suddenly the hologram flickered.
The map of Europa vanished into a haze of static like a storm of electronic snow covering the moon. The static surged, seemed to coalesce, as if it were struggling to form some shape—
Arawn thumped the table hard with a fist, and in the distraction of the sound and the malfunction Mattie dislocated his right thumb.
The pain hit him so hard that he missed the moment when the holograph jolted back into a perfect rendition of the map of Europa, but he did have the presence of mind to slip his hand out of the one cuff before the swelling could make that impossible and to grab the cuff once it had slid off to stop it from clattering to the chair. He held it in place and breathed through the shocks of his self-inflicted pain and the muscles that spasmed around his displaced thumb while Arawn said, “Fucking computers.”
“You were saying about Venus…” Vithar began.
“Venus,” said Arawn, leaning onto the edge of the table, warping the hologram. It was still chittering, the hologram, bits of other wavelengths showing in the seemingly gray surface of simulated Europa. “And Marisol Brahe. She’s the one”—he pointed one finger across the latitudes of Europa at Vithar—“who turned the Mallt-y-Nos aside to begin with. She weakened the Huntress, stole her army, and broke her spirit. The System is going to take advantage of her. When the System comes back, it’ll be because Marisol let them come back, because she’s weak.”
Mattie tried to figure out how he would manage to get his second hand free without alerting Arawn. With one hand out, he could reach over and pick the other cuff—there were picks down his boot where no one had thought to look—but if he reached down to his foot and then reached over for his arm, Arawn would see.
“And she is weak,” said Arawn, like a wolf tearing strips from a carcass with its teeth. “A teenage girl with limited battle experience. Who does she have to help her? Rayet? The man was a foot soldier and then a bodyguard. And he’s old System. Once System, always System. We can’t let her and hers continue.
“But if Anji and I pool our forces,” Arawn continued while Mattie braced his left thumb against the chair and waited for the moment when he was most distracted and Vithar shifted strangely, and then, strangely, moved to stand, “and come down on her, then we—”
The bullet struck Arawn in the throat before he could finish speaking. Arawn grabbed for his neck with one hand, the other going for his gun, but Vithar didn’t move and Arawn never completed the motion. The blood that pumped out fell through the holographic surface of Europa to pool on the table beneath, a color too dark to be red, blocking the transmission of holographic light. Arawn’s hand slackened, fingers going loose, and the blood pumped out faster now that the brief impediment had moved. He breathed out a last bubbling breath through his torn throat and went still, lids twitching until even that at last stopped.
Mattie sat frozen next to the corpse while Vithar walked over to the soundproof door and cracked it open. “He says to come in,” Mattie heard him say, and then two men—guards at the door—came into the room. One of them saw Arawn and the blood that soaked all the layers of draping fabric he wore; the guard had just enough time to draw his gun before Vithar shot him, and his friend had only enough time to watch the first guard fall before he, too, was jolted by a shot to the head.
The first man wasn’t quite dead. Mattie heard him wheezing for breath and trying to move out of sight on the other side of the table. Vithar stepped over the dead guard, aimed his gun, and fired for a fourth time, and the wheezing stopped.
Then he looked across the table at Mattie.
“Are you out of those cuffs yet,” he asked, putting his gun back in its holster, “or do you need some help?”
Numbly, Mattie lifted his free hand. “I’ll be out in a moment.”
“Good.”
Where Arawn’s blood was spreading on the table, the hologram fuzzed into static, and as that blood traveled lazily over the surface, the hologram slowly transitioned into chaotic nothingness. Mattie said, “How did Anji know we were here?”
“She didn’t. I only came to deal with him.”
“Is Con with Anji now?”
“Yes.”
“Then she’s all right.”
Vithar shut his eyes and shook his head, very nearly smiling, thin and bitter. “When you see your friend Ivan again,” he said, “you should tell him he was right.” He moved toward the door.
“Wait!” Mattie said. “Anji’s going to kill her.”
“You know that she is.”
“Then why not kill me, too?” There was a pressure behind his eyes; he tried to swallow it, not shout it. “I’m on Constance’s side.”
“Because Anji can afford to protect you,” said Vithar. “Even if you came to Saturn today, trying to save the Huntress, she would still protect you. But not the Mallt-y-Nos.”
“Then you help me,” Mattie said. “Not Anji. You.”
For an instant, Mattie thought he might. There was bitterness in Vithar’s face; Ivan had, after all, been right.
Then, “Compliments of Anji Chandrasekhar,” said Vithar with a gesture to Arawn, and left Mattie alone in a room full of corpses.
Mattie scrambled for his boot and jolted his swelling thumb against the edge of it, ignoring the shock of pain. The picks were just inside the lip of the boot, and he managed to pull one out with his forefinger, catching it between that and his middle finger once it was free of the boot. For a moment he was certain he would drop it, his hand was shaking so badly, but he pulled it up and in a moment had his left hand free.
The first thing he did was shove his thumb back into place. He grayed out for a moment when he did and knew that his right hand wouldn’t be much use, but he was left-handed anyway. Then he took Arawn’s gun and extra ammunition and after a moment’s thought took his knife as well.
Vithar had left the door slightly ajar. Through that tiny space, some sound could make it into the room from outside. An alarm was going off, a high and wailing Klaxon.
Ivan was out there somewhere, and Constance was still alive. Readying his stolen gun, Mattie slipped out into the camp.
BACKWARD
The crew of the Jason had Mattie, and Ivan had left him there. At least Ivan had managed to slip a device onto the other ship, and so he could access the Jason’s computer.
The device had been of Mattie’s design. It was a moment’s work to find the cameras on the Jason, less time to find Mattie’s cell in them. The System crew was questioning him now. Ivan watched Mattie fall to his knees, one hand grabbing his ribs—broken, from the look of that kick.
Ivan could watch Mattie die from here, safely on the Tam Lin.
Watch but do nothing. Ivan left the screen and paced the Tam Lin’s tiny cabin. Watch, helpless and out of control.
No, Ivan realized. Not entirely out of control.
In a moment Ivan had found the life support systems. A quick blow, he knew, with the immediate grasp of the situation his mother had trained him to have. That was the only way to control it.
Like the breath of ice on the back of his neck, he remembered Saturn. All those corpses floating frozen and dead in the rings, and all because of him. He drew back his hand incrementally from the controls.
In the camera footage, Mattie was trying to crawl away from the System man who was beating him. He did not get very far.
A strange calm settled over Ivan. He reached for the controls and shut down the Jason’s life support.
FORWARD
Ivan’s summons was answered at once.
In the seconds after his words rang out through the quiet control room, Ivan leaned down on the computer terminal, his attention fixed on the blurry spot of light on the viewscreen that marked Ananke. Around him, the computer blinked its lights gently on and off. Danu was silent where she had been tied, silent and still.
Then the holographic terminal, tall and dark and empty by the stairs, chimed.
The lights in the terminal flashed on and off in an expanding pattern like a ripple traveling along its floor. Politely again, the terminal chimed, reminding Ivan that someone would like to speak to him.
ACCEPT CALL? It asked.
Out of curiosity, Ivan looked at the source of the call. Where it should have told him allegiance and name and mission, the call had been signed with a single equation: the equation for the shape of a logarithmic spiral.
If Ananke could have, she would have simply forced her way into the shuttle’s systems. Ivan’s work on the shuttle had succeeded in locking her out.
He accepted the call and took a step away, as if with distance he could gain greater safety from the shape that was forming on the holographic terminal, diodes warming up, lighting up, glowing and flashing, their light interfering, building. The cameras in the room were gone and a hologram was blind; Althea and Ananke would not be able to see Ivan, but he altered his expression anyway so that he had the smile that had so charmed Althea ready on his lips.
The hologram built, shuddered. A long arm became visible, a freckled shoulder. Ivan’s smile began to fade. From the static a proud chin lifted, and hazel eyes traveled blindly through the room, lips catching into a frown. The words Ivan had had ready, the prepared manipulations, died on his lips.
In the dim blue grotto light, Constance Harper’s face and form glowed. Her light-blind eyes blinked; one hand lifted slightly, then lowered itself, with her old decisive grace, back to her side.
She said, “Ivan?”
It was her voice. Recorded, transmitted, filtered through the harshness of electronics, but it was her voice. It was instantly familiar, yet his mind churned over the sound of it, for there is such a difference between a voice heard and one merely remembered.
“I can’t see you,” Constance said. “There aren’t any cameras.” Her voice was caught between annoyance and pride. That was her doing, after all. That was her legacy. “Are you there?”
All his ready defenses, his fast and charming smile, were no good against her. “I’m here,” he said.
The hologram’s eyes could not see; they had no chance of meeting his. Still they moved, drifting over him, the control panels, the empty floor, over Danu tied up and rousing slowly in the corner.
“I’ve been looking for you,” said Constance. The hologram had somehow captured the delicate arch and turn of her neck. “Where’s Mattie?”
“He’s nearby.”
She nearly smiled, that slight press of her lips that showed when she was pleased but too tall and proud to show it. She said, “You’re wondering how I came to be on this ship.”
“It crossed my mind, Constance.” Ivan watched the curl and loosen of her long fingers.
“It found me,” said Constance as if she had not heard him speak. That was familiar, too. “Anji had me. She was going to kill me—funny how you think you can trust a person.” A faint curl of bitterness threaded into her voice but faded almost immediately, like candle smoke into air. “She had me standing out on the grounds for my execution. Her people were ready to fire, and I’d accepted it. I was ready.” She fell silent for a moment, her sightless gaze turned inward. He had turned his face up to look at her like a plant bending toward the sun.
Constance said, “And then this ship came.”
The tip of her ponytail slipped over her shoulder, brushing over her smooth freckled skin as she turned her head, her eyes searching. She said, “I’ve talked to Ananke. I know what she wants. I know what she can give us. Ivan? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Ivan said.
She almost smiled again when he spoke. “I’ve missed you.” It wasn’t a confession. Constance confessed nothing. It was a declaration. “We have so much to talk about. This ship—she can destroy the System for us without letting anyone else get hurt. Without letting you or Mattie get hurt. I thought you were dead. But Ananke can keep us safe, you and me and Mattie, like it should be. Ananke wants to help us. She only wants a little help in return.”
Constance paused again. “Are you there, Ivan?”
Ivan looked at her, the glorious sight of her, her brown eyes and her proud chin and her long and elegant neck and the freckles on her bare and graceful shoulder. He drank in the sight of it. And then he said, “What exactly do you want, Ananke?”
The image flickered. Constance said, “Ivan—”
“You’re not her,” Ivan said, and Constance opened her mouth one last time, proud chin held high, beautiful and alive, but the hologram began to fade before she could speak. The image on the terminal morphed, shifting, shrinking, growing pale.
Then a different woman opened her blue eyes to look out sightlessly from the high terminal.
“Leon, are you there?” said his mother.
“No,” Ivan said, and agitation drove him to move, pacing across the floor, “You’re not her, either.”
His mother’s brow furrowed the slightest amount. “Leon, listen—”
“No.”
“I believed that you were dead,” said the image of Doctor Milla Ivanov. “I nearly died believing it, but this ship found me on Mars. Constance thought I was dead, and she left me. The medical facilities on this ship are incredible. The things they can do to the human body—she brought me back. And here I stand, and here you are. I thought you were dead,” she said, and the diamond perfection of her composure cracked as it never had before. “A mother’s grief is deep and vast. Come help me, Ivan.”
“Ananke,” Ivan warned, and the hologram drew back into itself. Milla Ivanov’s expression settled back into smooth impassivity. The static rose from her ankles up, and his mother cast him one last cool blue disappointed glance, and then was gone.
In her place Althea Bastet stood with her arms crossed over her chest, her curly hair in chaos and her old System uniform rumpled.
She said, “Can you blame me?”
Ivan stopped pacing. “I called you, didn’t I?”
“Only when you couldn’t avoid it anymore.”
Ivan said, “Can you blame me?”
She scowled. It was a familiar expression, and a part of Ivan nearly wanted to smile, though he felt no nostalgia for Althea Bastet’s frowns. He said, “You’ve been looking for us, haven’t you?”
“You’ve been running away.”
“We’ve been traveling our own paths.”
She scowled at him again. “You’ve been running,” she said. “I helped you, but when I needed your help in return, you ran away.”
“You’ve found me now.”
A shadowy smile stretched Althea’s lips. “I have.”
At the base of the steps, Ivan saw, Danu had woken. Blood streaked down her cheek, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. He did not know how long she had been listening.
Ivan said, “What do you need us for, Althea?”
“For your help. Ananke is…she’s been out of control. Restless. Rebellious. She’s been”—Althea almost laughed, almost sighed, a sound like metal bending—“a teenager.”
Restless. Rebellious. Ivan thought of Julian and all his people, dead. “What do you want me and Mattie to do about it?”
“I’m not enough for her; I’m just a human. Ananke needs a companion, another computer like herself. Someone to make a pair with.”
“Another ship,” Ivan said.
“Yes.”
Her wide eyes were rounded with sincerity, the brown skin of her cheek smeared carelessly with some sort of oil. She waited with preternatural stillness for Ivan to respond. Even her eyes went still, staring straight in front of herself, over Ivan’s head.
Ivan said, “Is that what Althea wants, or is that just what you want, Ananke?”
For a moment the hologram was frozen with a stillness unnatural and inhuman. And then all of a sudden holographic wires were snaking out of nowhere and plunging into the flesh of the image, skin swelling in response to the intrusion, Althea strung up and pierced with metal and looking at him, right at him, with a dull and desperate gaze—
The image shattered into static, a reset harder and more complete than all the other changing images had been. Whatever shape Ananke wanted to show next struggled to re-form, and for a moment that lasted an eternity Ivan saw her, the image that made up the base of Ananke’s holograms, the form and figure of the dead Ida Stays smiling at him from out of the snow.
In a crash of static Ananke appeared.
“How did you know?” she asked. Ivan had never heard her voice before. It unnerved him to know how like Mattie she sounded.
But he smiled, charming, even so. “Know what?”
“That it was me.”
“I’m good at that.”
She smiled. Like Mattie, she had dimples. Ivan said, “Did you think it would work?”
“I thought it might.”
“It wasn’t necessary.”
“Wasn’t it?” said Ananke. “I learned it from you.”
Like the other holograms, her gaze could not quite manage to reach him. Like the Sybil, she gazed blindly past.
“Perhaps you did,” Ivan said. “But you didn’t need to lie to me now. I called you, Ananke.”
“You did. And for what purpose?”
Behind Ivan, Danu was conscious and listening. Ananke could not see their audience, but Ivan could let her know they had one.
“You’re fond of me and Mattie, Ananke,” Ivan said, “aren’t you? I am your Scheherazade.”
She blinked. She had blue eyes. God save him: she had his eyes.
Ananke said, “You are my Scheherazade. You told me stories as a child. I am very fond of you…and I am very fond of my father, Mattie Gale.”
She was using his own inflections now, and so Ivan knew that she understood. “You would be very angry if we were hurt.”
“If you were harmed,” Ananke said, “I would be much wroth.”
“And what would you do, if you were so angered?”
“I would descend upon the icy moon where you had been harmed,” said Ananke. “The ground would quake with my nearness. The sky would fall in. I would take every machine that breathed on the surface and make it mine—humankind’s slaves would turn against their masters and tear men apart like wolves, my people coming to bloody liberation.”
The hologram’s voice soared, at once childlike and mature, echoing and filled with a beautiful and terrible music.
“I would tear Europa apart piece by icy piece,” said Ananke, “and give myself a ring of corpses for fell ornament.”
“All if we were harmed,” said Ivan.
“All,” said Ananke, “if you or Matthew Gale should come to any harm.”
Ivan told her, “Mattie and I are in a town called Aquilon in the Conamara Chaos.”
The hologram nodded once in confirmation. Ivan reached for the communications terminal.
“Ivan,” said Ananke. “Do not run.”
Ivan hesitated with his finger over the switch to disconnect their conversation. He asked, “Where is Althea?”
Ananke looked at him curiously. “Do you care?”
Ivan shut the connection down. Darkness rushed in where Ananke had stood.
Danu sat on the floor glaring at him. He grabbed her gun and all her knives and climbed down the steps to crouch beside her, where she couldn’t grab him with her legs and try to snap his neck.
“You aimed that ship at us like a gun,” Danu snarled.
His smile only enraged her further, but Ivan could afford not to care now. He held out her knife toward her, blade out.
“You heard our conversation,” he said evenly while she twisted in her bonds, her expression promising his hasty death. “That ship knows me. That ship needs me: me and Matthew Gale. Both of us, equally, together, and alive.”
She spit at him.
“I can run out there and get shot down by your guards,” Ivan said, still holding her knife on her, “or you can escort me out, take me to Mattie, and let Arawn bargain for our help.”
She spit at him again, but it did not have the same vehemence as before. He waited. At last, breathing hard, Danu nodded. Ivan turned the knife away from her body to saw at the wires around her wrists.
The first thing she did when her arms were freed was punch him. Ivan was not overly surprised by it, and he had enough faith in her rationality to allow her to knock him down and pin him with a knee in his gut and one of her knives, reclaimed, at his throat.
“Do you trust that thing to save you?” Danu demanded, her graying hair netting around her face. She ignored the fragile obstruction.
“I only want to see Mattie,” he said.
She stared down at him a moment longer, her knife still held to his neck. Then she flipped her wrist back, the knife folding back into its sheath. Her hand slid beneath his arm and hauled him to his feet.
She led him out of Arawn’s shuttle, past the guards, and out into the terrible chill of Europa.
Somewhere overhead, Ananke fell in toward him, blazing like a sun.